That's Just the Toxins Leaving Your Body, Dear

A couple of weeks of worldly significant happenings has just happened by: Royal Wedding: the bride wore too much blush, in my books. Collective yawn, please. Osama shot...and buried at sea? Way to put to rest to any conspiracy theories, America. What, no Osama pelt mounted in the Oval Office? A federal election that was decisive, if nothing else.

And tonight, checking my scalp for dandruff (check), a grey hair noted. Eek. I recall having a few whities (blondies?) in my mid-twenties, and then nothing. Each undyed year has seen a deepening of the brown. It had to happen one day, I suppose. This is no silver strand, but a bonafide grey. Irregular kinky, erratic pointy bit of charcoal in ye olde mane. With a slight smattering of dandruff as distraction.

Jesus. I feel like I've aged 5 years these last 5 months. A long haul of rude health for most of '09-'10 evaporated in early '11, with cold after cold followed by fucking-I-shit-you-not strep throat this last week. So much for dodging a bullet at the Easter egg hunt surrounded by kidlets. One of them must have slipped a small infested finger into my fruit salad when I wasn't looking.

I always blame the children, of course. If it weren't for children, no one would be sick. They're just lucky they serve other purposes. Though it pains me to see modern parents not take advantage of their offsprings' malleability. Here you have the perfect opportunity to mold your mini-me into a small indentured servant-creature, at least until the surly teen years. You are totally blowing it, in my opinion, dear we-just-want-them-to-be-happy parents. Go figure. And there's so many of the little dears.

This October, we are expected to tick over to seven billion people. Gee, it just seems like yesterday we were celebrating six...oh wait, that wasn't yesterday exactly, but relative to 3.5 million years of human evolution, eleven years is close.

Before your inner Malthusian starts clutching its cheeks and screaming like a Munchian, however, contemplate that we are now standing in the shadow of the population bomb's mushroom cloud. In 20 or 30 or even 40 years max, we should start to see a decline. And let's say in that time the rate of growth has eased, so that at 2050 we're at 9 billion earthlings versus the 11 billion we could be if we kept replenishing our stock as zealously as we are today. Which we won't. It's already started, and if nothing else it's awesome to think about having absently daily-lifed through so many likely zeniths for humanity: peak oil, peak regeneration of the species, peak income gap (hopefully).

These grandiose ruminations may seem disproportionate to the facts, and nothing but the facts, ma'am. One, tomorrow is mother's day, and set aside the usual treacle of the occasion to pay homage to the women you are and know. The majority of you are doing the best you can under the circumstances, and for that I salute you. I took my mum out to dinner and a movie a day early, because really, no matter how old or cool or quiet your mum may be, all she really craves is a date with her kid(s).

Two, all the pisspoor health and pus-throat and greying locks and one-sided Wolverine growth (over which, armed with tweezers, I now keep a vigilant watch) are making me feel my years, finally. Luckily, I have the chin acne of a 16-year old boy (which prompted my mum to hand me a tube of Prosacea, thanks), so the overall effect is still somewhere between Miss and Ma'am. My window for ever being feted by a natural born on Mother's Day is ever-shrinking, which somehow doesn't phase me (not being the maternal kind nor delusional enough to imagine that I am all of a sudden twinging because I should be) but is still curious, none the same.

Three, I spent this weekend visiting my sister and her two kids, and although they can be whiny, noisy and demanding little sons of guns (not to mention incorrigible communal food-touchers, which I really cannot abide) it must be admitted they can be funny and charming and sweet as well. Whether it's my 7-year old nephew dancing jerkily to Florence and the Machine in his underoos and grandma's fuzzy red slippers (before inevitably sliding out on the slick wooden floor and bonking his head), or my 5-year old niece declaring in the upscale garden store she wants a metallic pink tape measure of her very own...so...so she can measure her head, they can be a tickle.

That, coupled with all my dear friends' eccentric and endearing broods and the Man's own half-progeny now wriggling around town, and it makes me grudgingly declare myself a friend to the little folk, despite their numerous diseases and propensity for ear-splitting orca-sounds. As their friend, I wonder about their future. I hope for them, and hope to even start doing more/anything to make it better for them.

So now that I've declared my intentions to be honourable and the friendship as "on", could you please please please stop making me sick? Or maybe, my little friends, what you're doing is simply prepping me for the pandemic we're apparently long overdue for as a race. In which case, thank you.

Happy momma (& mommaboy) day!
Daughter Gretchen